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Writing Resource Thursday

This week has been pretty rough at work, so I missed two (!) writing days and one blogging day. Hopefully I’ll be able to make up for at least one day during this weekend.

While I play catchup with my word count, here are some intereting things to peruse:

Seth Godin wrote a blog post with 19 tips for authors that is unique, insightful, and thought provoking. If there’s one thing I am going to take from it it’s this piece of advice (number 2 in the list):

The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.

Why your characters are boring is an interesting (with a bit too many unnecessary pictures) post from Ben Schmitt on the importance of giving a character something they want or desire, and making sure that each scene expresses a movement towards fulfilling or attempting to fulfill that yearning.

For a scene to truly be a scene, each character in the scene has to want something. There has to be conflict, an obstacle inhibiting the character from getting what they want, and before the scene ends, one of the characters has to be different as a result of that scene.

Finally, another blog post from Ben Schmitt, this time on Now Novel, with 11 pretty solid tips on how to write even when you don’t want to. While I don’t agree with all of them (number 4 for instance. The best time to write is when you have time to write), the majority of them have worked for me in the past.